Gorbachev Compares Trump, Putin Meeting To His With Reagan

Worries Defense Establishments Won't Allow Deal

The former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, said over the weekend that the meeting between Trump and Putin reminded him of his meetings with Ronald Reagan.

“I recall when we started the disarmament dialog with Ronald Reagan, I was told in several days after first contacts that US naval vessels entered the Black Sea and approached territorial waters of the Soviet Union. I was asked, “What shall we do?” I understood immediately this was a provocation: someone in the Pentagon did not want that dialog,” Gorbachev said, reported Russian state news agency TASS.

Handshaking between Putin and Trump is a positive signal, the ex-president said. “This opportunity should not be missed. It will be challenging but this meeting is very important. It may become a starting point to deliver results seemed to be unachievable now,” Gorbachev said.

Reagan and Gorbachev went so far in their meeting in Iceland during the Cold War to discuss eliminating nuclear weapons altogether. The meetings eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union as the USSR realized they could not keep up in an arms race with America as Reagan was pushing missile defense. The technology is something that Russia and China worry about to this day.